The core of class 5 was tackling some number and group theory, as the course description advertises that we'll cover such (plus I *like* this stuff and find Python extremely valuable in communicating it). I think the students were amused that I'd actually tackle this stuff with them. It's not like they're being graded (they'll get certificates of completion), so from their point of view, this is a safe space in which to preview some stuff they might encounter again later. We went through Fermat's Theorem (not the famous last one, but this one): If p is prime then pow(b, p-1, p)==1 provided gcd(b,p)==1. Then I presented this as a specific instance of Euler's Theorem: pow(b, phi(n), n)==1 provided gcd(b,n)==1. It's an instance, because phi(p) = p-1. We'd already discussed what phi(n) means -- that's where I started (source code linked below). The sequence I use is something like this: 1. Euclid's Algorithm (Guido's simplest Python version) 2. Totatives of n 3. Phi(n) 4. Fermat's Theorem 5. Euler's Theorem 6. Some hand waving about the relevance of 5 to RSA (plug for 'In Code' by Flannerys) 7. definition of the P class for doing integer multiplication modulo n 8. group theory result that [P(i) for i in tots(n)] forms a group 9. what's a group? CAIN (closure, associative, inverse, neutral element) That was the tough stuff (they stayed with me for the most part). But interleaved was plenty of play and mental relaxation, including: Elastic Interval Geometry java programs: fluidiom.v2.nl (one of the most sophisticated applets ever written) www.springie.com (cute/clever EIG application) I explain how knowing Python is going to make Java seem a lot more accessible, and there're still good reasons for learning Java, including this whole applet technology, which Python does not duplicate. We also played with and projected: Terra server: http://terraserver.microsoft.com/ Kids enjoyed locating their homes and schools etc. Our area happens to be one of those terraserved. One student turned me on to keyhole as a perhaps better alternative: http://www.keyhole.com/ (looking into it) All of this is more fun given the big screen up front. The plan is to project Pygeo and some VPython under this heading of "fun stuff" next week (last class), as well as to delve into the J language some (again per course catalog). Much of the Python source code we've been using over the weeks, plus one student POV-Ray .pov and rendering (used with permission, so long as identity of student held back) are viewable here: http://www.4dsolutions.net/satacad/sa6299/ (I notice that test7.bmp is 2.3 meg -- I'll convert it to compressed format after I post this email (POV-Ray output is defaulting to bmp in our class)). Kirby PS: I spent the rest of Saturday working with Free Geek to migrate data from an Access MDB to Postgres, for an open source Perl app called sql-clinic. That took several hours.

[Render] [Edit Settings/Render] == Alt-R Alt-R Return and change the "Command Line Options" to include "+FN", you will generate .PNGs, which are losslessly compressed. Much smaller than .BMP (still larger than .JPG), but preserve everything. Using .PNGs will make it easier for your students to take pictures home.

--Scott David Daniels Scott.Daniels@Acm.Org

Thanks Scott. Yes, this is how I have it set up on my boxes. Just didn't get to it in the Win2000 boxes in the classroom. I might mention something about it next week. As far as taking picture home, the students just take the .pov source on floppy or USB dongle, so they can continue working on them. POV-Ray is a free download. They just re-render. Kirby

-----Original Message----- From: edu-sig-bounces@python.org [mailto:edu-sig-bounces@python.org] On Behalf Of Kirby Urner Sent: Saturday, February 19, 2005 6:26 PM To: edu-sig@python.org Subject: [Edu-sig] python satacad: class 6

Then we dove into vectors for awhile: translation, rotation and scaling being the big 3 computer graphics transformations. I started constructing a vector class, then switched to a fully developed one. That led us back to POV-Ray and some pre-rendered polyhedra downloaded off the netlib library.

""" Gentlemen! The course of lectures which I now begin will be an immediate continuation of, and a supplement to, my course of last Winter. My purpose now, as it was then, is to gather together all the mathematics that you studied during your student years, insofar as this could e of interest for the future teacher, and in particular, so show its bearing on the business of school instruction. """ Felix Klein, Elementary Mathematics from and Advanced Standpoint, 1908 Klein being a Great Mind in mathematics at the dawn of modernity, who turned his attention, intellect and energy to the problem of education at the "school" level. To me, he is a great redactor of modern mathematical ideas to his day, and in that sense in the spirit of Euclid. And what Klein prescribes in the end sounds much like a primer on the underlying mathematics and ideas which we now know as the fundamentals of computer vector graphics. Except that we tend to know these ideas, and teach them, out of the their historical and intellectual context. And there is an argument that one cannot truly understand modern intellectual sensibility without some grasp of these ideas, at least in their spirit. Klein also being instrumental in opening his University's math department to women. And apparently, in the eyes of his students, living up his essential ideal as a teacher - "Never be dull" Side-trip: The quaternion: http://mathworld.wolfram.com/Quaternion.html Quaternions - mid-1800's idea extending the concepts of so-called imaginary numbers to new dimensions, and becoming the basis for the development of vector mathematics, mathematical physics, and - in some sense modernity - itself. And a fundamental tool in the mathematics of 3d computer graphics and probably known most commonly now in that context - but too often - out of its historical context, and without understanding of its historical significance. So my short manifesto is only ratifying the importance of where I think Kirby is already going and what he is already doing. Computer graphics, good. Computer graphics with pretense, better. Art

Behalf Of Kirby Urner We all installed Pygeo and played with the examples for awhile (Islamic Patterns especially).

Those are from a book called Islamic Patterns by Keith Critchlow, who I think you told be worked with Fuller, What I am playing with there in my own mind - and just playing, nothing very well achieved - are algorithms as patterns realizing visual patterns. I do a "drawing" in a non-algorithmic manner, sort of how one might draw it by hand, and then try to duplicate the same drawing taking an algorithmic approach. Meant something to me at the time, but as I say, wouldn't expect that something would be communicated by what is actually there. As it happens had lunch yesterday with an Islamic friend. Who was explaining to me something about yesterday as a Holy Day in the faith, but one in which Sunni and Shiite practice and ideas diverge vehemently, it being a holiday having something to do with the succession to the Prophet, which is in particular, apparently, the branches diverge. And why it seems to be a day of fraternal fighting. He was also trying to convince me it was an important Jewish holiday, because I believe in the context of the event being celebrated in the Islamic faith, it was considered to coincide with an event in the Jewish calendar. Wasn't aware of yesterday as a significant day in the Jewish calendar, but that doesn't necessarily mean it wasn't. Python. I it was really a business discussion. He has a technology background. Oracle sys admin mostly. But he has lost touch as a hands on guy, is having trouble making a living, and this was something of a strategy session. He wanted me to look at a product that he is interested in supporting and selling. It's a Business Mapping tool, part of a Business Process Management suite developed out of New Zealand. Hot stuff. And we start it up, and I see in the status bar, quite out of the blue "...initializing Python". More digging, it is developed in Delphi, with Python embedded as a glue piece, and with a wonderful little tool to walk people who may not know Python through the process of writing Python glue scripts. Anyway... Art

-----Original Message----- From: Beni Cherniavsky [mailto:cben@users.sf.net]

Arthur wrote on 2005-02-20:

Also, the Islamic holiday cannot always coincide with a Jewish holiday because the Islamic calendar constantly drifts relative to the Sun (having no leap monthes it misses about 11 days per year). Some years from now it will occur in the summer, while Adar is always in the winter. So he could only mean the coincidence to have some meaning at this specific year. [Pardon me if I'm explaining the obvisous, when I'm don't know the correspondent's level I tend to err on the side of too much details]

Well I am Jewish, and the explanation as to Adar is interesting, and new, to me - so I doubt you are stating the obvious to a more general population. Though I did know that Purim is a holiday where the faithful are supposed to let loose a bit and have one (or two) too many - a vestige of old school religion - intoxication as a religious rite being core to religious experience to, say, the American Indian but outside the experience of the Christian and Islamic faiths, as far as I am aware. The issues of calendar (and more particularly time) synchronization happens to be of current interest to me. I am the kind of Jew who celebrates High Holy Days, in some manner - and not much more. Ekrem and I used to work at the same firm, He is more observant in his faith than I am in mine, and therefore keeps with him a calendar which gives the prayer times on a daily basis. I would ask him for the time of sundown on holidays I do observe (in my way) - knowing that probably even on the question of the time of sundown our faiths depart, but that his time was good enough for my purposes. The history of science being a keen interest of mine - I had just picked up the book: Einstein's Clocks and Poincare's Maps by Peter Galison just out in paperback. Have not gotten too far into it, but I think Galison is making and following the point - as to Einstein - that it is no small matter that he was working at a Patent Office in Switzerland when formulating his ideas - the accuracy of clocks and the synchronization of time among clocks being a very active concern of the applied technologists of his time, and particularly within his jurisdiction - which Galison thinks, logically, helped provoke Einstein's thinking. Of course Anna will nail all this down for us with her presentation at PyCon: """ The Time of Day """ walking us through, I think, the Python tools available for keeping ourselves in sync. Art